


The Forecast

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: AU, Gen, Science Fictiony AU, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short, exploring the entire question of what a "primary relationship" could or should be. This grew out of an ongoing annoyance that True Love has to also be Sexual Romantic Love. That a person's greatest and most meaningful relationship at the very least should be sexy-love.</p><p>I don't necessarily agree...</p><p>I hope you are interested. I hope you have some fun, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Forecast

Sherlock was twelve when the forecaster came to see him. Mummy brought him—she’d met him at work, through a statistics project helping determine the predictive accuracy of forecasting techniques.

“He’s the best I’ve seen,” she said. “And he’s kept superb records—superb! Going back his entire career. One of those fellows inspired by the old do-it-yourself geniuses of the last century, I suppose. Darwin. Eddison. Even Einstein, I suppose. Anyway, he’s kept records, and maintained contact over the decades, working to see how readings came out, ensuring his clients kept the original paperwork on their own predictions. His success rate is, my my own estimate, in the 90th percentile.”

Father hummed and smiled at her, and shook his head. “There’s always something off,” he pointed out. “No such thing as a perfect prediction. As though nature itself abhors precience, if you ask me.”

Mummy rolled her eyes. “That’s why I put him in the 90th, not the 99th. There are going to be discrepancies. But he’s good, love. I want him to do the boys. And the timing was perfect. We were finishing up one pass over the material: the data is down in computing right now, being massaged through the mainframe. And with Mike home from uni…”

“I’m not having a reading, Mummy,” Mycroft said, from his place at the far side of the room. He was, Sherlock thought resentfully, looking far too grown up and suave. He wore an expensive tailored sports jacket, matching pants, and a gleaming white cotton shirt starched crisp. Here at home he wore no tie or waistcoat. When he’d arrived, though, he’d looked like the sort of sleek, smug professional man illustrated in the adverts in news magazines—magazines professional men and women read. If he’d smiled instead of scowling, he could have sold toothpaste or hair shampoo, he looked so polished.

It was probably a good thing he scowled a lot. Sherlock might have had to forgive him for being too—too—too MYCROFT, if he’d smiled more. As it was, it was easy to remember he was smug and dismissive and that he rationed out attention for his baby brother in dribs and drabs, when his head wasn’t buried in a book, or bowed over the keyboard of Mummy’s home desktop. Or that he was smarter than anyone Sherlock knew. Or self-satisfied as a cat. Or sarcastic. Or…

Anyway.

Mummy and Mike were bickering away, each determined to have their way on the subject of forecasts. Mummy insisted it was all for Mike’s best good—better to know what was ahead. Mike argued that he fully intended to go without relationships, and that the rest was largely irrelevant in any case, and that he wanted to go into the civil service and having anyone know too much about him was a chink in his armor.

Mummy would win, Sherlock thought. Mummy always won—because she fought dirty, and because she was usually right, and not least because Mike adored her, and wanted so much for her to adore him back.

Sherlock smirked. Mike didn’t even know that about himself. He’d bet on it. But Sherlock had watched him all his life, and he could see how it set Mike on edge that all Sherlock had to do was walk into the room to claim Mummy’s full attention.

Take that, smart-arse, he thought to himself. You may be oldest. You may even be the smart one. But this idiot is the favorite.

“I’ll let him do my reading, Mummy,” he said in mid-argument, not even looking up from the accrostic he was writing. He lay on his belly, knees bent up, and let his long, slim feet wobble in the air. “You went to all this trouble, after all.”

He could hear Mike half choking. Served him right for upsetting Mummy like he had. Sherlock would fix it, though.

“I’d really like to know what he sees. Bet Mike’s just going to have ziiiiipppp. Nothing.” He popped the p on “zip,” and lingered salaciously on the n in “nothing.”

“You’ll both get a reading,” Mummy said, firmly, but it was clear Sherlock’s interruption had improved her mood. She smiled, and leaned over to pat his round bottom as she scurried past to the kitchen. “Get dressed now, boys. He’ll be here in a half-hour, and I’d like him to do the readings before dinner so we can focus on our food after.”

“I am dressed, Mummy,” Mike muttered—but it was obvious even he realized he’d lost the war. He sighed, and said to Father in a subdued voice, “As I am not considered old enough to make my own choices about a forecast, perhaps I should ask if at 19 I am considered old enough to pour myself a scotch?”

Father chuckled—a rueful note. “Don’t let her get to you, Mike. She just sees this as a chance for you to get a reading from someone she trusts. That’s all. And by all means, pour us both a drink. I could use one myself.”

Mike did, and he and Father retreated to the side of the sitting room, where they talked over Mike’s plans to complete his degree, and the challenging issue of which of several offers of places in the civil service he should accept. Sherlock half-listened, but most of his mind was fixed on the accrostic and the long wait for the forecaster to arrive.

When the man got there, he wasn’t at all what Sherlock had expected. Of course, on the telly forecasters were always a bit strange. They dressed in hippie clothes, or Nehru jackets, or odd Victorian sorts of things like the Doctor did on Doctor Who. They drank potions and lit candles.

This man actually reminded Sherlock a bit of Mike. He was tall and slim and pale-skinned, and bald as a hen’s egg. He wore a neat suit very similar to those you could see professors wearing at Mummy’s college: A bit more tweed than business suit, but quite conservative for all that. No suede on the elbows or heavy-handed houndstooth check. He did wear a knit tie—Sherlock would always remember it. It was knubbly and dotty and he eventually was driven by his own curiosity to discover that it had been knit with a seed stitch. His name was Mr. Skinner, and he had all sorts of things in his briefcase.

“Do you have a private room we can use?” he asked Mummy. “I prefer to do this somewhere quiet, without many distractions.”

“You can use my office,” Mummy said, bright and cheerful and fascinated. “I’m looking forward to watching.” She hesitated, when she saw his face change. “Or…not?” she said, doubtfully.

“I prefer not,” he said, suddenly apologetic. “It’s just—I can see they’re both a bit old to have their mother listening in on their personal fortunes. So much of what I read is love and relationship. It’s a bit like having a window into their most private selves.”

Mummy blinked, then blushed red. “I…yes. I do see. Silly of me.” She gestured him toward her room, though. “Still—you can work in there. Mike? Sherlock? Who goes first?”

Sherlock wanted to—he wanted to make Mike look like the chicken he was. Unfortunately Mike apparently wanted it over with if he couldn’t escape it entirely, and he stepped forward, long legs carrying him to the door. “I’ll go,” he growled, still holding on to his glass of scotch.

Sherlock frowned, then, as Mycroft started in the door, whined, “Mummy, can I have some scotch? You know it’s better if I can learn early.”

“Yes, of course, dear, just a little bit,” Mummy said, absently. “So curious, you are…”

Mike hadn’t been allowed distilled beverage even to taste until he’d headed for uni, at which point it was rather late in the day to try to stop him. Sherlock smirked down at his toes and Mike stalked away, followed by Mr. Skinner.

A half-hour later they came out, Mike looking tense and drawn, and Mr. Skinner looking rattled.

“How was it, Mike!” Mummy asked, bright and chipper and curious as ever.

“Yeah, what did you get Microbe?” Sherlock added in along side her. He knew Mike was upset, even if Mummy hadn’t caught it.

“Nothing,” Mike snapped, and went straight to the drinks cabinet and poured himself another shot without even pretending to ask Father. He shot it down, and poured himself another.

“Mike!” Mummy said, a bit scandalized. Then, beginning to worry, she looked at Mr. Skinner. “Here—let me see.”

Mr. Skinner met her fierce eyes and swallowed hard, but shook his head. “Privacy,” he said, softly.

Mummy blinked. “But…” Then, suddenly terrified, she said, “Is it bad…”

“Not bad, Mummy,” Mycroft sighed from his side of the room, not turning to look at her. His voice was weary and resigned. “Not bad. Just—“ He shrugged. “Let’s just say the odds are in favor of my career, but a bit hard on my private life.”

She opened her mouth, ready to cut in, when Sherlock decided he’d had enough of being ignored for Mike’s stupid, annoying attention-getting melodrama. “It’s my turn, now,” he said, popping up from the sofa. He gave Mr. Skinner his most dazzling, air-headed game-show host smile. “I wonder what you’ve got for me?”

Mr. Skinner frowned slightly, and took one last look at Mike, but then smiled at Sherlock, accepting the social escape hatch Sherlock had offered him. “Very well, my boy. What do you hope I find in your future?”

“A pirate ship,” Sherlock said, grinning, all tooth and attitude. “Adventures.”

 

He came out quieter than he’d gone in.

“Oh, dear,” Mummy murmured.

“No, it’s not bad,” he said. “It’s just not me.” He scowled. “I’m smarter than that. And…” He looked side-eyed at Mr. Skinner and scowled. “You mixed us up. You gave me Mike’s reading.”

Mr. Skinner shook his head, soberly. “No, son. I’m afraid I didn’t. This is your reading.”

Mummy slipped it quickly out of the man’s fingers before he could pull it away, and her eyes scanned the summary chart on the first page. She frowned slightly. “It’s not so bad,” she said, comfortingly. “Adventure. And, look, your primary relationship will be a friendship. I always think that’s rather sweet.”

Sherlock scowled again, and gritted out, “NO. NOT MINE.”

Then he was gone out the back door, Redbeard running along with him, ignoring Mummy and Father calling him in from the back garden and the fields beyond to come home.  
He ran for hours, until he was exhausted. He came back through the night shadows, working not to be seen. He slipped into the darkened house, and sighed with relief.

He headed for the kitchen, determined to find leftovers to make up for the lack of dinner. Only when he’d pulled out the leftover roast and the jug of milk and set them on the counter did Father say, “Mummy wants most of that for curry tomorrow. One sandwich, but leave the rest, Billy-boy.”

“Sherlock,” Sherlock said, frowning.

“Not acting like you’ve grown into the name, yet,” Father grumbled. He slipped a cutting board to his younger son, and a utility knife from the block. “Chutney’s in the pantry, along with a new round of cheese.”

Sherlock nodded and constructed his sandwich in the dim light shed by the hood of the cooktop.

“What upset you so much?” Father asked, after Sherlock had managed a bite or two.

Sherlock scowled at him. “That’s not my forecast,” he said, blushing. Then, more intensely, “I don’t do friends. I don’t have friends. Especially not like that.” He was nearly spitting. A little spray of bread and lamb and chutney misted the air.

Father frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re saying, son.”

“He said my primary relationship would be a friendship.” Sherlock glowered fiercely. “I know what that means. I’m not like that.”

Father cocked his head. “What?” He sounded honestly confused.

“The boys. At school. That’s what they say about you if you like…if they think you like…if you’re queer. ‘Oh, forecaster’s gonna match you with a friend for a primary, yeah?’ That’s not my forecast.”

“Huh,” Father said, pondering. “A new way of being insulting about sex. I didn’t think it was possible to come up with even one more way of being rude and wrong at the same time.” He shook his head. “I wonder when that usage started…” His voice trailed off. Mummy was math and numbers. Father was etymology and words.

Sherlock was more than a little suspicious that, if he stayed quiet long enough, Father would get up and start writing down notes to himself to research the new usage of forecasting and the forecaster’s term “primary relationship.”

He didn’t want Father to do that. He wanted—no, he needed answers.

“If it doesn’t mean that…” He blushed and bit into his sandwich, then washed it down with milk.

Father looked up, eyes still a bit absent, but face coming alert slowly. “What? Oh. What do you know about forecasting, son?”

Sherlock sniffed. “Tells your future.”

Father shook his head. “No. Tells your tendencies, I suppose.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not me. I don’t…”

“Not that kind of tendency,” Father huffed. “Really, in the end only you know who attracts you that way. What a forecaster can tell is what kind of social ties you are most likely to form, and when, and how. What kind of work you’ll fit in. What kind of relationships will be most comfortable. I’m no expert, but I remember when I got mine done—by someone a lot less prestigious than Mr. Skinner—the reader told me I’d be called to romance, but only with a man of genius.” He sighed. “That was back in the day when any reader tended to assume a relationship with someone strong and intelligent had to be a relationship with a man. But I knew—like you know—that I didn’t want a romance with a man. I assure you, it wasn’t until I met your mother that I remembered what I should have known all along—that not all geniuses are male.”

Sherlock grinned a mischeivous grin over the second half of sandwich. “Mummy won’t let you forget it, now.”

“No, she surely won’t,” Father said, eyes twinkling. “Sherlock, there are kinds of relationships—romance, friendship, parenthood, child, leader, follower….as I recall there are over fifteen areas your 'primary relationship' can fall into. Leadership, for example: those are people who will never be more completely bonded with anyone but the people they guide. I know a lot of soldiers who draw leadership, and a lot of teachers. It’s not that they won’t have romance, or friends—but their strongest ties, their primary ties, will always be to their subordinates, and to the people of their team or tribe. Some people are drawn to romance—sex and love together. For them that will be the big life-changing relationship, the anchor in a storm. Some will bond with their children—or their parents. Some will actually be solitaries, bonding with the life of the mind. You’re going to be drawn to friendship. That’s all that means.” He paused, and then said, wryly, “What is with you boys, anyway? Did it never occur to any of you that a friend could be a girl?”

Sherlock almost choked on his milk and scowled at his father. “Don’t be stupid,” he growled. “Girls aren’t friends.”

Father laughed, a sudden, explosive little chortle, and muttered, “Twelve. Thank God he’ll outgrow that, anyway…” then ruffled Sherlock’s hair. “You—clear this up, go shower, and get to bed. It’s late.”

He himself stayed downstairs.

When the house was quiet—when everyone else was asleep—he did something only Mycroft knew he could do—and that Mycroft hopefully would not imagine he would do. He slid soundlessly into Mummy’s office and retrieved the torn up, crumpled test papers Mr. Skinner had used in testing his boys. He turned on his wife's little desk lamp and reassembled them, then evaluated them, cautiously.

He knew more about forecasting than he’d said.

Mummy was the genius in the family. The math genius, anyway. It was Father who was the spy and profiler.

He looked at Sherlock’s sheets and sighed. Adventure indeed. A boy called to trouble as the sparks rose upward. He’d have conflict aplenty, and grief and fear. Anger—oh, God, yes. But he’d bond to friends—a few, but a precious few, and beside those few romance would mean nothing to him.

Mycroft, now…

Father sighed. His oldest son was a romantic—in a chart filled with a million reasons he would have been better born under a cynic’s star. Mycroft would yearn for one true, deep romance his whole life, and barely get by on his second affinities—family and leadership. God alone knew if he’d ever find that one great love in amidst the drive to serve and protect, the ache for professional excellence.

But Sherlock would find his way…

Father traced his fingers gently over the test papers, noting Sherlock’s jagged, passionate handwriting, the vigour of his drawings. He was, in an odd way, relieved. Romance as his primary might be too much for the boy: love of that kind was complicated and difficult and demanded more than Sherlock was likely to willingly give. But friendship? That could be deep and constant and intense as any other relationship, but without hormones and cultural fantasies to warp it out of shape and turn it into living hell.

He closed his eyes, imagining all the possible friends Sherlock might have—the men; the women. He could see his boy with anyone, so long as they were true and fierce and beautiful of spirit.

Sherlock.

So it was that when, at last, after many years, he got to know John Watson, he could only smile, and remind his wife to add one more victory to Mr. Skinner’s impressive record. Sherlock had found his one great love—his friend. His life-long friend.


End file.
